Hopkins-Pascal II draws huge ratings for HBO

By Dan Ambrose: The second and hopefully the final fight between Bernard Hopkins and Jean Pascal brought in a huge rating of 1.8 million viewers for HBO Sports last Saturday night. The ratings were the highest for HBO since 2009 when WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko wiped out challenger Chris Arreola in a one-sided 10th round stoppage. Sadly, the Hopkins vs. Pascal II fight was about as interesting as that fight.

It brought in good ratings but the fight was boring and not really competitive after the 4th round. An exciting fight, it was not. For fans of 46-year-old Hopkins, it might have been interesting to watch the bout because he was breaking George Foreman’s record as being the oldest fighter to ever win a world title in boxing. However, it’s doubtful that boxing fans were too focused on records and were more looking at the fact that the fight wasn’t interesting.

With the big ratings that the Hopkins-Pascal II fight brought it, hopefully HBO doesn’t push for a third fight between Hopkins and Pascal because it would be painful to even consider sitting through a third fight after watching the last two boring fights between them.

Hopkins is supposed to be fighting Chad Dawson next, but that fight is now a question mark. Hopkins’ promoter may look to get out of the Dawson fight and look for a bigger bout against IBF super middleweight champion Lucian Bute. If that ends up as the case then Dawson pretty much wasted his time fighting and beating Adrian Diaconu on the undercard of the Hopkins-Pascal II bout last weekend. Dawson was under the impression he would get to fight the winner of the Hopkins vs. Pascal II fight, and if he doesn’t get the fight then it would be sad.